Deep Core

by F X Holden

  He’d been in the flying club at college, and by 1932 he got his pilots license in Oregon, paid for by friends of his father, on the promise he would use his skills in China if the chance arose. In 1934 he joined the Guangdong Provincial Airforce. In 1935 they sent him to the Luftwaffe at Lagerlechfeld to learn aerial combat and when he returned he was put in charge of the 3rd Pursuit Group’s 17th Squadron. In 1938 after the death of his CO, he’d assumed the rank of Group Commander.

  “Is America declaring war on Japan?” John had asked Madam Soong, incredulously. He’d signed up several years ago convinced that his isolationist homeland, which had not even gone to the aid of England in its darkest hour, would never lift a finger to help China.

  “Technically, no,” Madam Soong said. “You would be a civilian, a contractor, hired by Generalissimo Kai-shek to train Chinese forces on the P-40 Warhawk.”

  “We would not be engaged in combat?”

  Madam Soong hesitated, “The Generalissimo believes the best training, is that conducted under enemy fire.”

  John had felt his loyalty to his new homeland tugging at him. “What rank would I be offered?” he asked.

  “Your combat experience is highly valued,” Madam Soong crooned, “Everyone has heard of your bravery. You would have command of a full squadron.”

  A laugh had risen in his throat, but he’d swallowed it, “I am a Pursuit Group Commander in the Chinese air force. I lead three squadrons today!”

  “Yes, but the Chinese air force,” she said. “And it’s not even your mother country any more.”

  It was the worst thing she could have said. She, of all people, a Chinese nationalist, trying to appeal to his American loyalties? “Thankyou, but I believe I can serve China best where I am.”

  “Would it matter to you that the unit is to be led by Colonel Channault?”

  “Old Leatherface?” John had asked. He’d studied combat tactics under Channault, an adviser to the Chinese leadership, at the Guangdong flight academy. “I respect the Colonel, but I’m afraid not.”

  “And I respect your dedication to our cause,” Madam Soong said. “But I have an obligation to advise you that the salary for a squadron leader in this unit is 750 American dollars.”

  As she expected, that provoked a reaction in him, “A year?”

  “No. A month.”

  John gulped. It was as much as he made in a year in his current role, and three times what he could make Stateside. He wavered, but only briefly. The whole exercise smelled of propaganda, and he had no desire to be someone’s Chinese-American pin-up boy.

  “I serve the Kuomintang cause,” he said. “Unless it displeases Generalissimo Chiang, I prefer to stay with my men here in the 3rd Pursuit Group.”

  He’d expected the woman to be angry at him, but she was not, “Very well. I will pass your decision down the line. Goodbye Major.” He was about to put the receiver down when he heard she was still speaking. “And Major? If I may speak personally?”

  “Yes, of course Madam.”

  “As a citizen of the Republic, I thank you.”

  As his airfield appeared on the horizon, he contemplated the flapping fabric of his holed starboard wing and it occurred to John that Madam Soong’s thanks were not much protection from Japanese cannon shells. For the first time in the war, he felt vulnerable. Biplane against biplane, he had felt he could match any pilot Japan could put in the air against him. But against these new Japanese monoplanes … it was surely a matter of time before he fell prey to a swooping Zero and he was not yet ready to go.

  After an unremarkable landing, and as he spoke with his intelligence officer, then filled out his report on the squadron’s kills and losses for the day, a conviction was forming. It became only stronger as he wrote letters home to the bereaved families of the four pilots he’d lost – as many as he’d written in the entire first year of the war. Putting down his pen, he looked at his watch and realised he was hungry.

  In the mess, he chose his usual seat beside Buffalo, who was, as usual already eating, shovelling rice and chopped spring onion into his mouth.

  John watched him, “No chicken or pork I suppose?”

  “Keep dreaming Group Commander,” Buffalo scoffed. “Maybe you can dream up some beef.” He put his bowl down and looked around for the mess room adjutant to try to bully the man into giving him some more. “How many did you lose?”

  “Four,” John told him, drumming his fingers on the table as the adjutant approached. “A bad day.”

  “That’s only four from nine,” Buffalo pointed out. “I lost two of five. That’s worse.”

  “Actually I think it’s better, mathematically, but what the hell,” he looked around the mess, where about fifty pilots sat eating. “It’s six empty seats.”

  “Look on the bright side sad sack. Four new pilots arrived today,” Buffalo said. “So we’re only two down. Dinner for myself and the Group Commander my man,” he said to the adjutant.

  The man’s face reddened, “I’m sorry citizen, you have already received your ration.”

  Buffalo looked like he was going to argue, but then changed tack, “True, true. It wouldn’t do for the men to see me getting special treatment would it?”

  The adjutant looked at him suspiciously, but ploughed forward, “I can offer you more tea?”

  “Tea, yes, excellent,” Buffalo said. “And rice for the Commander, yes John?”

  “Yes, thankyou,” John said to the adjutant. “And tea please.”

  “Yes, good,” Buffalo said, and grabbed the man’s elbow as he went to move away. “And please be sure to fill the Commander’s bowl right to the top,” Buffalo winked. “All the way.”

  John watched the adjutant walk away and turned to Buffalo, “I’ve reconsidered Madam Soong’s offer.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t win an air war in the 1940s with aircraft from the 1920s,” he said. “In Burma they’re training in Warhawks. Fifty cal guns, sealed canopy, good ceiling, great top speed…”

  “Corners like a pig, I hear,” Buffalo said.

  “So we fly in straight lines,” John said, leaning forward. “Boom and zoom. Zeros won’t be able to catch us.”

  “And what is this, ‘we’ thing?” Buffalo asked.

  “They offered me squadron leader,” John admitted. “I’ll need a good section leader.”

  Buffalo looked at him with what John thought was confusion, then he realised it was pain. Or hurt.

  “I’m fine with being a lowly Group Commander in the air force of the Chinese Republic,” Buffalo said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  The adjutant returned with John’s bowl of rice and spring onion and put it down in front of him, but Buffalo reached over and took it. The adjutant stepped back in surprise, as Buffalo picked up his spoon, dug it into the bowl and shoved the rice into his mouth. “This is Chinese food,” Buffalo said to the adjutant without looking at him, glaring instead at John. “It is not for Americans.”

  John stood. He put a hand on the shoulder of the other man, but Buffalo ignored it. John walked away. He knew he was right. Courage had not ended the War to End All Wars, it had been technology – massive clanking gasoline powered gunships crawling across the shell-holed mud of Flanders, breaking through barbed wire, crossing over trenches to break the German lines and allow Commonwealth and American and French troops through. Huge four engined bombers flying from England to rain bombs on demoralised German cities. So it was then, so it would be with this war. Whoever had the technological edge would win. So it would be with all wars, of that he was sure.

  END PREVIEW

  Have you read the first book in the Future War series by FX Holden: BERING STRAIT?

  "Impossible to put down. The action is intense and the plot unique. It soars along at a fast pace. This story is unmissable."

  5 Stars, Readers’ Favorite.

  "Realistic and original. A fast-paced thriller packed with action and suspense."

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  The year is 2031. Without warning, Russia starts a lightning operation to seize control of a vital arctic waterway off the Alaska coast.

  For America, it's a threat to national sovereignty.

  For Russia, it's a matter of life or death.

  For hot-wired naval aviator, Karen 'Bunny' O'Hare, it's about to be a bad day at the office.

  NOT everyone takes impending nuclear armageddon as calmly as O'Hare. Dug in deep behind enemy lines, half a mile under the arctic ice, US Navy Airboss Alicia Rodriguez suddenly finds herself in command of the wrong unit, in the wrong place, at just the right time.

  FROM a forward airfield at Lavrentiya in the Russian Far East, Major-General Yevgeny Bondarev, is leading a war he doesn't understand against a foe who fights with machines instead of men.

  IN labyrinthine tunnels under the New Annexe of the US Embassy in Moscow, Ambassador Devlin McCarthy discovers she can follow her conscience, or follow the orders of her Secretary of State, but not both.

  AND staggering through the rubble of cruise missile strikes on Saint Lawrence Island, Yu'pik teenager Perri Tungyan learns just how far his country is willing to go to protect its national interests, and how far he'll go himself.

  BERING STRAIT IS OUT NOW ON AMAZON: in eBook and Paperback.

  Author’s notes

  Thanks for buying DEEP CORE and supporting Independent Publishing! If you enjoyed it, please do leave a rating or review on Goodreads or Amazon. Ratings are like gold for Indie authors, and proceeds from FX Holden novels really do go to charity. In 2019 that charity is Plan International, the girls rights and education organization working in more than 70 countries around the world.

  DEEP CORE was a manuscript I started playing with during 2018 when the first of the big data leaks/hacks/thefts from multinational internet giants struck. I began to imagine a world where there was no privacy, where your every thought, feeling and sensation was uploaded to the cloud, in real time. Analyzed for learnings. And stored, forever. Around the same time I started reading a lot of articles about the future of AI, mostly in the context of advanced weaponry, but also from the point of view of scientific research, medical research and climate control.

  I imagined a benign planetary AI, tasked with protecting the citizens of a planet by optimizing its habitat and managing their health and welfare. How far might it go to carry out such a directive? And how vulnerable could that society be if the AI itself were attacked by outside actors? So I started DEEP CORE not by building a storyline, but by building a world: the system of Coruscant. A system of moons, far from Earth, reliant on each other for the resources needed for their survival. Mutually dependent, but far from at peace. A habitat which was stable, but still evolving too – plagued by unsolved environmental issues. For this purpose, I created the idea of Transient/Permanent Global Amnesia.

  As a political backdrop, I played with the idea of ‘AI theology’; competing beliefs about how to implement and govern the deployment of AIs, given their enormous and somewhat frightening potential. In one theology, the belief was that a central AI under the control of the government and its citizens was both the most powerful, and safe. It would develop and evolve more slowly, but it could be more easily directed and controlled. In the second theology, the belief was that such a system was vulnerable to attack, or catastrophe, and too slow to learn and adapt. Tatsensui and PRC were adherents to this theology. The alternative path, followed by New Siberia, was to create thousands of independent AIs – cybers - all learning and evolving at their own pace and contributing to planetary development, distributed across at least two moons (NS and Orkutsk) so that an attack on one, would not mean the destruction of all.

  I reasoned that even a central AI like The Core would see the value in having independent self-directed learning systems and would implement the idea of ‘cyber’ agents itself, but within the confines of Core idealogy, these would remain ‘chained’ to the central AI. Free to learn, but not entirely free to act. And with a lifespan limited by The Core’s desire to learn and evolve by retiring old generations and birthing new ones. It led to some interesting thought games: how would a TS cyber feel about this? Would they just accept it as their fate, or would they question it? Would they regard re-integration as death, or more like reincarnation. And what about love between two individuals, where one or both had an expiry date?

  Given these dilemmas, the next piece in the storytelling was to create the ethical and moral code about relations between cybers and humans. Should they relate as equals, when cybers were clearly physically and intellectually superior? Should they have rights, given that they were essentially quantum computers in bioware shells? Should they feel? Care? Love? Between cybers alone, or between cybers and humans? To inform these questions I created the concept of the Charter of Cyber Rights, and the movement for cyber equality that lays behind it, for AJ to subscribe to.

  Which led to the question of whether a cyber should just sell its labor, either intellectual or physical, or instead, could alternative economic models exist? I realized that if a cyber had the right to freely choose whatever job it wanted (within limits), it might well choose a job that didn’t use all of its computational capacity. Should that capacity then just go to waste? Surely not. The idea of the ‘bandwidth economy’ – cybers selling their excess computational power back to The Core – flowed from this. Together, these things gave AJ the freedom of movement he needed to be the protagonist I wanted, but within a complex social and legal structure that he would constantly have to navigate.

  Finally, based on this universe, I created an intrigue: what if the faction that favored the ‘many AI’ theology felt threatened, or frustrated in its progress, and wanted to ‘subjugate’ the worlds that were adherents of the ‘central AI’ theology: The Core worlds. I gave New Siberia the ambition to settle the until now uninhabitable planet of Coruscant, through its cyber agents – an ambition that the other moons in the system, Tatsensui and PRC, resisted. How might NS go about crippling The Core? Hack into The Core to gain control of it, of course, but how? I’m clearly no cyberwarfare expert, so I looked for a ‘human’ solution to a cyber problem. An AI as critical and advanced as The Core would anticipate and have multiple layers of protection against external cyberattacks. But what if the attack came from within? What if the attacker, was a part of itself? Or at least an entity that could convince The Core that it was?

  There you have the process for how Deep Core came to be. If you enjoyed it, I hope you consider trying out other FX Holden novels in a similar vein, though less hard-core sci-fi, more ‘future military’ intrigue; BERING STRAIT and LIAONING. Your reading helps good causes!

  FX Holden, Copenhagen, July 2019